From left to right, the members of Team Greypoint: Nicholas Chu, Eric Buys, and Jordan Khoo, celebrate winning first place at the Defence Tech Hackathon with their $5,000 cheque, in Toronto, on Saturday.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
From a window six floors up at Toronto Metropolitan University’s business incubator the DMZ, a perfect view of the city’s Sankofa Square shows patrons perusing food vendors on Saturday morning.
They’re oblivious to the fact that above them, in the building on Dundas Street, seven teams of computer whizzes are racing to solve one of the biggest challenges to Canada’s security and sovereignty: Arctic surveillance.
For the all-day defence tech hackathon, software and defence enthusiasts from across the country gathered to compete and rapidly develop scalable solutions for maritime surveillance in Canada’s North.
Hosted by Canadian defence innovation network The Icebreaker, the event challenged participants – mostly students and recent graduates in their mid-to-late 20s – to leverage satellite data and their range of expertise to find a better way to monitor vessel traffic in Canada’s Arctic waters.
Miran Qarachatani, left, and Omid Latifi, right present their project to the hackathon's judges.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Karim Bardeesy, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Industry and a hackathon attendee, said the event’s Arctic emphasis was something that coming federal government policies, such as the defence industrial strategy, would likely also focus on.
“It’s the frontier where our sovereignty could be challenged and we see an aggressive power, with lots of capabilities,” he said in an interview. “The Prime Minister and others have been pretty clear that what we’ve had to be present there is insufficient, but the opportunities there are tremendous.”
Monitoring of maritime traffic near Canada’s northern border is limited at best. According to a 2022 Auditor-General’s report, Canada has been for some time, largely unaware of the activity taking place in its Arctic waters, some of which it holds exclusive rights to explore and utilize through means such as fishing or mining.
Existing satellite systems positioned above the area capture single snapshots at a time, offering a fragmented view of the vast ocean often with a significant delay in transmission. Many of these satellites are also nearing the ends of their lives and don’t meet the needs of federal agencies and departments such as the Coast Guard or National Defence, the Auditor-General’s report said.
This, compounded with the fact that much of Canada’s northern equipment and fleets are aging out, means the swath of water extending just beyond the country’s extensive coastline is largely shrouded in mystery.
George Kavuma presents his team's project at the hackathon.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Between 1990 and 2019, the number of voyages in Canadian Arctic waters more than tripled to 464, according to the Auditor-General’s report. Yet, the report also found that awareness of who is making these trips and the kinds of risks they pose, from illegal fishing to marine pollution, is largely unknown to the federal government.
This is a problem Sam Silver and Jack Langille feel a duty to help solve. The software engineers, hailing from Halifax, said the hackathon appealed to them as “defence curious” recent graduates.
“This is very relevant and topical and seems like an area that we might be lacking in right now, so there’s a huge sense of duty almost in participating in these sorts of things,” Mr. Langille said.
The chance to contribute a tangible solution that Canada’s Armed Forces can use was also a motivator for Carlos Matallin, a member of team Polar Defence at Saturday’s hackathon. He said the fact that participants only had eight hours to come up with their products was appealing because it proves effective solutions can be born rapidly and with limited resources.
For most teams, the opportunity to walk away a winner, or even just with a software solution they’re proud of, was motivation enough to arrive around 8:30 a.m. on the weekend. Mr. Matallin’s teammate, Ossama Elbannaoui, said he was excited about the market the team could tap into post-hackathon with their vessel tracking software. Prior to the event, gaps in Arctic surveillance weren’t something he had spent much time considering.
“At first, I was like, ‘Well, what’s up there? It’s a snowy desert.’ But when you understand the implications and the current trends, you realize that it’s not as empty as one might think,” Mr. Elbannaoui said.
MP Karim Bardeesy speaks before the start of the Defence Tech Hackathon presentations.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Each team, some of which were made up of people who were strangers to each other prior to the event, tackled the challenge with a diversity of perspectives. The hackers included a Canadian Armed Forces musician, Ukrainian infrastructure engineers, and engineers with work experience spanning France’s Ministry of Armed Forces, Shopify and General Dynamics.
Their solutions matched their range of experience. Using satellite imagery provided by Kitchener, Ont.-based space tech company SkyWatch, teams came up with monitoring systems that featured AI assistants, drones and even analyses of patterns created by ships’ wakes.
At the end of the day, in a room full of CEOs, investors and government officials, they presented their preliminary work to resounding applause.
The stakes? There was $5,000 for first place, $3,000 for second and $2,000 for third, all provided by Canadian space tech company NordSpace. The policy project Build Canada also sponsored the event.
Travelling from Vancouver and Guelph to meet in Toronto for the weekend, team Greypoint Industries came the furthest to get to Saturday’s hackathon. And as the only team whose solution integrated drone technology with the available satellite data, they made it well worth their time by winning the top prize.
To conclude their presentation, team member Nic Chu said, “We believe that this solution, if fully developed, could prove indispensable to the surveillance and continued sovereignty of the Arctic.”
Editor’s note: The second photo caption has been updated to correct the surname of Omid Latifi.